On Thursday, February 2, 2017, TOPO inaugurates a new exhibition and a cycle of performances in its window display located on the ground floor of the 5445 de Gaspé building. The opening of indexE, a project carried out with the support of 100 collaborators, will start with a reading performance from 12 to 5 PM by Sarah Chouinard-Poirier, initiator of the project.

indexE raises the question of the place of women in literature, using orality as a mean of sharing and transmission. Sarah Chouinard-Poirier brought together an ad hoc community of 100 people identifying themselves as women, trans or queer person, by asking them to propose a book of particular importance in their life.

This indexE of these 100 works to be kept unforgotten will be exhibited in the window display throughout the duration of the exhibition. In this intimate space – part library, part radio station – the performer and her collaborators will offer a cycle of durational readings, five hours a day, for six days. Content will be audible in front of the window display as well as online, through a live audio broadcast at http://www.indexe.ca .

These shared experiences will attempt to map filliation territories and networks of struggles, ideas and solidarities which transcend generations, rising as a bulwart against the forgetfulness in history tends to bury the works of women, trans and queer people.

Radio-performances – 12 to 5 PMThursday February 2
Friday February 3
Saturday February 4
Thrusday February 9
Friday February 10
Saturday February 11
Live audio broadcast through www.indexe.ca

Sarah Chouinard-Poirier is a performance artist working closely with cultural and community-based initiatives in Montreal. Her performances mix presence, gesture, speech and object to compose an image as sensitive as it is radical, to create her own feminist and resistant mythology.Between theatre and action art, Sarah Chouinard-Poirier’s practice also extends in collective projects surrounding interdisciplinary theatre that seek to explore the concept of performativity. Her recent solo work focuses on the body, spoken action, dreams, empathetic phenomena, utopias, power and systems of oppression. She is also interested in relational practices, care ethics and reappropriation of narratives by people and communities. Her life is shared between artistic creation, cultural work (Volte 21) and helping relationships (La rue des femmes / Herstreet). She considers herself lucky to know rebellious, powerful and inspiring women, thanks to whom she finds her strength.

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Mandate

The Montreal artist-run centre TOPO is a laboratory for digital writings and creations for web, performance, and installation spaces. Its mandate is to incubate, produce, and circulate original multimedia artworks that explore interdisciplinary and intercultural hybridizations in the digital arts.